More concerns about items bought from online marketplaces
MORE concerns have been raised about Amazon and eBay’s failure to stop the sale of unsafe products after a charity found them listing “potentially deadly” electrical items.
Electrical Safety First said the two sites, as well as online marketplace Wish, were putting consumers at risk from possible severe electric shock and fire after testing items such as hair straighteners, phone chargers, travel adaptors and laser hair removers.
Out of 15 products bought on the advice of the charity’s technical experts and tested independently, 14 failed tests against the UK standard. Failures ranged from minor noncompliance over markings to severe failures posing a risk of electric shock and fire to the consumer.
All three sites have removed the products from sale.
However, the charity said it believed its findings to be a “snapshot of a much wider problem”.
Just last week, Which? said Amazon and eBay were failing to take
“basic steps” to stop the listing of toys that appeared to have been declared unsafe by the EU safety alert system.
The consumer group’s findings led it to call on the next government to make online marketplaces legally responsible for stopping the sale of dangerous products.
Electrical Safety First captured footage of a single-port charger exploding after buying it from Wish, having already identified that it was at risk of internal rupturing leading to a possible explosion.
A laser hair remover bought from eBay posed a significant risk of electric shock to the user because of access to live parts, while counterfeit GHD hair straighteners bought from Wish were also found to pose a potential electric shock risk.
A hair-dryer bought from Wish ignited in a test restricting the product’s air flow, while a modelling hair comb purchased via Amazon Marketplace also posed a fire risk due to a non-compliant plug which is illegal for sale in the UK.
Electrical Safety First said online marketplaces were “swiftly becoming the Wild West of the web”, noting that the current Product Safety Pledge many marketplaces have already signed up to had no legal weight.
A survey by the charity found almost one in three Britons (29%) would knowingly buy a fake or substandard product online if they saw it for a fraction of the price it would normally be.